Sightings
City of Straw
As the question of influence came up so frequently in 2010--what they listened to, whether you'd heard it and could get it, and how it become something you knew of it all--it seems prudent to point out the largest influence on City of Straw: Space Invaders.
You don't need to pull up your digital subscription to Wire, searching for an old noise trio that took its name from that unimpeachable gaming classic. We're talking about the game, the ye old Atari/arcade thing itself, that psychosis inducing, epilepsy causing piece of history: that game where you stood alone for humanities survival, facing off alone against a horde of ever-quickening destruction. For reasons known best to them, the Sightings of 2010 left the Sightings of 2007 (and Andrew W.K. as producer) behind, choosing instead to make an album that's so infected with that doom-inducing crunch that the word "paranoia" barely works. You're recognize the sound, and if you don't, you know someone who does. It's that chick-chick-chick-chock, the sound those armies of hell made as they methodically inched their way towards you, one row at a time, another lurking directly above them. It got faster, sure, but it never abandoned its metronome--gnawing all the way down, crashing against imagined walls like the typewriter it imitated. The occasional break--when that stupid little oval flew by--never shows up in City of Straw. There is no way out. This is punishment.
It would be a mistake to side too closely with the band and call City of Straw "rock music", but the noise label doesn't quite fit either. Songs like "Saccharine Trap" are far too punk, and the thankfully muffled lyrics (as of this writing, I still have no clue what Mark Morgan is screaming, although I think I caught a "hell", "mudlove" and "i caught my hair") point to why this is a band you'll only see live if you're really into them--you can't turn down a concert, and earplugs only go so far. It's not that Sightings are such an incredibly unique band that they stand alone--there are quite a few other groups operating in the world of fractal brutality, grinding noise, and incomprehensible mutterings--it's that they always seem to operate with an eye towards completion, that none of their songs (even the nine-minute title track) last a second longer than necessary. Everything on Straw has a sense of finishwork to it--after the chomping of our Invaders disappear, there's a caterwalling guitar, Morgan starts groaning about knives (or dreams, I'm not sure), the slam, it slams--and then they're done with us. We're still dying--we always will be--but they're ever ready to try, to kill us one more time.
-Tucker Stone, 2010
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